


Selling Copies

by SilverMyfanwy



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Acromantulas, Activism, Book: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Dragons, Flourish and Blotts, Gen, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Hogwarts, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Newspapers, Newt selling his book, Nifflers, Young Charlie Weasley, Young Hagrid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-23 13:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16620344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMyfanwy/pseuds/SilverMyfanwy
Summary: Act One: Rubeus HagridAct Two: Charlie Weasley-Newt met two truly remarkable children whilst selling his book.





	Selling Copies

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy!

Part One: Rubeus Hagrid

The boy with a mass of wild black hair and the beginnings of a beard, who towered two feet over the top of the heads of all the other students in the room, was rather difficult to miss.

He was sitting at the very back of the room, pressed right up against the wall. His robes were full of pockets that seemed to have been sewn on by a clumsy hand, there were twigs in his hair, leaves on the cuffs of his sleeves and mud on his boots. The smell of wet fur, something Newt could smell from a mile off, radiated off him as Newt walked past to the stage.

He had been asked to come and do a talk on magical creatures for the second years as apparently worryingly low numbers of children had signed up to Care of Magical Creatures the year before.

Newt got up on the makeshift stage and gave a talk on magical creatures, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, magizoology, what being a magizoologist could entail and some of the things he had got up to during his time in the field. He had given the talk many times in many places to many different people and could probably do it in his sleep. The talk ended a few minutes before lunch began and Newt stayed. He had been invited to have lunch with the headteacher, Albus Dumbledore, who had been one of Newt’s favourite teachers at school, and he planned on going to see his old Care of Magical Creatures teacher at the end of the day.

As he packed his things up and started to walk out of the classroom, the boy twice the size of the other students came up to him.

“Hello,” he said with a voice deeper than the dungeons. “I’m Rubeus Hagrid, but everyone just calls me Hagrid. I was wonderin’ if you knew anythin’ about, um, hidin’ doxy nests.”

Newt smiled. “Why, have you got one hidden in your dormitory?”

Hagrid blushed. “Yeah. You won’t tell the teachers or the caretaker, will you?”

“No, of course not! I tried to keep a doxy nest in my dorm one year but I got stung so many times that I had enough and started keeping Nifflers instead. How are you getting along with the stinging?”

Hagrid shuffled his feet and looked at Newt shyly. “I’m, um, me mam was a giant. So, um, the doxy stings don’t bother me like they do normal people.”

“That’s very interesting. I never knew that giants react differently to doxy stings. Have you got any other people in your dormitory?”

“It’s just me, coz I’m so big, they decided they’d better give me a room all to myself, but it joins right onto the other dormitories.”

“How big is the nest?”

“About the same size as you.”

Newt’s eyes widened. “A doxy nest the same size as me? How long have you been keeping it for?”

“Three and a bit months. The house elves don’t do anything about it, so I don’t think the doxy stings bother them either, or that the doxies, maybe, even, don’t go near the house elves at all and just leave them be to get on with their cleaning.”

“Three and a bit months? That’s grown very quickly.”

Hagrid nodded. “It’s got bigger and bigger every day.”

“Have you done any disillusionment or camouflaging charms yet?”

“No. I’m only in second year. I tried makin’ the doxies be silent, but either my spell went wrong or they don’t react to it.”

“See if you can borrow a book from the library on how to do hiding spells. That should help. What are you feeding them? I’ve always thought that…”

-

“I was chatting to one of your second years earlier.” Newt sipped his tea.

“Which one?” Dumbledore asked.

“A boy named Rubeus Hagrid.”

Dumbledore chuckled. “That doesn’t surprise me. He loves animals, all animals. He sees you as his hero, you know.”

Newt blushed. “We were talking about doxies.”

“Ah. I believe he has a nest of the little buggers in the ceiling in his dormitory that he’s been growing for some months now.” Dumbledore smiled. “Didn’t you try to keep some once when you were at school?”

Newt nodded sheepishly. “And the rest.”

“He’s a good kid, Hagrid.” Dumbledore smiled. “Though he does have a penchant for the rather more dangerous creatures.”

Newt sipped his tea and didn’t mention the acromantula egg he had taken out of a pocket hidden deep under folds of his coat and handed to Hagrid in secret, with some whispered instructions and a wink before leaving the classroom to go to Dumbledore’s office.

-

Part Two: Charlie Weasley

There was a small redheaded boy sitting next to a large pile of books -that was quite honestly twice the height of him- underneath a staircase at Flourish & Blotts. He smiled at Newt. “Hello.”

“Hello.” Newt sat down in a nearby armchair. “Are you alright? You don’t seem to have any adult with you.”

“My mum’s looking at Lockhart’s books.” the little boy said. “Are you the animal man?”

“I’m a magizoologist. My name’s Newt. What’s yours?”

“I’m Charlie. Charlie Weasley. ‘s nice to meet you.” Charlie stuck his hand out and Newt shook it. “Did you write the beast book?”

Newt nodded. “I did.”

“It’s my favourite book. The dragons are the best bit.” Charlie said, smiling. “I love dragons. I would like one as a pet, but my mum says that me and Bill and Percy are enough hard work as it is and I can’t have one ‘til I leave home. Do you have a pet dragon?”

“Pet dragons aren’t allowed in England.” officially, they weren’t allowed anywhere in Britain but Newt had seen enough to now that the Welsh didn’t pay much attention to that law.

“I’ll move to Scotland then.” Charlie didn’t seem at all put off. “And why do the goblins get to have a pet dragon and not people?”

“Goblins?” Newt was rather confused.

“Yeah. My dad says that the goblins have a dragon chained up to guard their gold. Is that true?”

“Oh. Gringotts. Yes, I do think that there’s a dragon down in the vaults.” Newt’s face fell and his heartstrings tugged for the poor creature tied up in the dark.

Charlie’s face darkened and his small fists clenched. “That’s bad. Dragons are supposed to be in the sky, flying, not down in the ground. And they shouldn’t be keeping a dragon if they aren’t allowed to, because maybe- maybe the dragon wants to be free!”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Newt said sadly.

“I’m gonna free that dragon one day.” Charlie said firmly. “I’ll set it free.” he peered around the tower of books to check on something. “I think my mum wants to go now. Bye, Newt.”

“Goodbye Charlie. Don’t let the goblins get you when you free that dragon!”

Charlie grinned and hopped off his seat. “I won’t.” he walked over to a redheaded woman holding a baby with another small boy by her side. They walked out, the woman clearly his mother.

Newt bowed his head and said a quick prayer to no one in particular that the boy would get the dragon out one day without being killed. He would have tried himself but he had been banned from going within 100 metres of the entrance since an incident 40 years ago involving a Niffler who’d managed to make an alliance with a Bowtruckle.

-

There were three newspaper clippings hanging on Newt’s wall: the first review of Fantastic Beats, an article on the appointment of Hogwarts’ latest Care of Magical Creatures teacher Rubeus Hagrid and another on the breakout of a dragon from Gringotts by Harry Potter, Bellatrix Lestrange and one Ron Weasley.

THE END.


End file.
